Poor Orwell, become a stick to beat his own with. We don't know where he
would have moved had he lived, but certainly at his death he was a
socialist anti-communist. Incompatible with that as with everything else,
buit a lot less so than with anything smavcking of Toryism.
Mark
At 05:54 PM 1/24/2005, you wrote:
> > Criticising Soviet communism was at one time considered to be siding
> with the right wing.
>
>Orwell was ready to criticise pretty much any version of left wing
>politics you like, including his own. In the canon of rude things
>people have said about socialists, Orwell has a good many of the best
>lines.
>
>I don't think he was ever really emotionally compatible with the
>movement that yearned, and still yearns, for unity of purpose and of
>action in a spirit of brotherhood. His lack of such compatibility was
>what made him useful as a theorist and a commentator. But it was
>always going to be intolerable to the types one hears in Doris Lessing
>novels, hissing at dissenters that the Party does not exist to provide
>them with a forum for their *opinions*.
>
>Dominic
>
>--
>// Alas, this comparison function can't be total:
>// bottom is beyond comparison. - Oleg Kiselyov
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